AUDUBON IN CHARLESTON 1833-1834 In the spring of 1833 Audubon arranged to sail to Labrador to investigate northern water and land birds. He took his son John with him, leaving Lucy in Boston to coordinate publication of Birds of America by mail with their son Victor in London. The Labrador expedition was a success. Once again Audubon was invited by Bachman to come with his family to Charleston. Audubon's son, John Woodhouse, was the first of his family to arrive in Charleston by steamer October 11, 1833, and quickly charmed Bachman's two daughters, Maria Rebecca sixteen, and Mary Eliza, fourteen. On the third day of his visit, he painted a watercolor of a Carolina Wren exploring a tangled honeysuckle vine loaded with berries in Eliza's sketchbook. John and Lucy Audubon arrived by horse-drawn coach from Columbia in Charleston on October 24. Audubon once again felt compelled to finish many of his Labrador drawings so they could be sent to London. A marathon of painting with Maria Martin and John Woodhouse took place during daylight hours. Every night with Bachman at his side when he was free, Audubon wrote an account of at least one bird for the second volume of the Ornithological Biography. Lucy Audubon worked hard, too, transcribing and consolidating Audubon's Florida and Labrador journals. Christmas came and went in the Bachman household before Audubon was able to write his London publisher that he was shipping three new drawings done in Charleston, plus twenty-five Labrador paintings of water birds that he, Maria Martin, and John Woodhouse "finished" during their drawing room marathon. Audubon had also picked up several other South Carolina subscribers to the Birds--William J. Rees, Esq. of Sumter, R. O. Anderson, Esq. of Georgetown, the Citizens Private Library in Charleston, and Dr. Eli Geddings. Audubon's wish to explore and collect birds in the prairies, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, had to be put aside again in early March 1834 due to the press of urgent business in England with his publisher, Robert Havell. Before the Audubon family left  Cannonsborough, however, Audubon presented the Bachman family with a set of the first one hundred prints bound full in "Russia leather" with lavish gold leaf decoration on the binding. Audubon wrote, "The great volume…I give with all my heart to my valued friends the Bachmans…and I shall try to furnish them with the sequel in like binding." John Bachman reciprocated by exhibiting 50 of the original drawings at a benefit sponsored by Charleston's Ladies Lutheran Society, with the proceeds going to the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbia. The exhibit, held at Segle's Rooms on King Street, on February 26-28 drew a large crowd that paid 25 cents a piece to see Audubon's drawings. Audubon completed the writing and printing of the second volume of the Ornithological Biography in England in late 1834. As he began work on the third volume, he wrote to his friend Bachman, "I must ask you in the most earnest manner to assist all you can and merely enable me to publish no trash, but pure, clean, truths." He listed dozens of birds he wanted to know more about. He also produced new drawings as fast as he could for Robert Havell Jr., his engraver and publisher. To do this he obtained dozens of skins of American birds he had not yet painted from British museums. He thought, in an optimistic moment, he would complete the Birds project late in 1837.

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